


Remember Me

by Winterling42



Series: Flesh and Blood and Dust [21]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Backstory, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 14:17:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6156292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterling42/pseuds/Winterling42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Back in the Vault in a very different role, Furiosa has a reunion she'd give anything to avoid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Theoretically, Furiosa had known what happened to Angharad. The conclusion had been inevitable in her mind, but it was an entirely different matter to se her arrayed in the Vault, frozen in front of the window, the tinted sun shining on her lioness’s golden fur.

 _Splendid_ , Joe had called her, and she was. Cleaner, taller, filled out with the good food and endless water of the Vault. Even her daemon had grown, though Furiosa had thought that impossible. Among the Wretched, she had been an ember, burning hot but hidden by a coat of ash. Here, dressed in the flowing white of the Wives, she was a brand burning with all the heat of an iron in her limbs.

Furiosa looked away. It would not do, to show more than awe and respect for Joe’s Vault and Joe’s Wives.

They were alone. Or. As alone as anyone ever was, in the Citadel. In the Vault. The others, the new Wives, were clustered around an old woman with a raven daemon. Furiosa thought at first that the words written on her skin were innumerable wrinkles, and found it much easier to stare at her trying to puzzle out sentences than to look at Angharad.

“Don’t you remember me?” Angharad had asked, as if the Citadel had wiped memories of sand and blood and dust from Furiosa’s skin. Angharad had been water in the Wastes, feral as her lioness and older than her years. Now a new knowledge hovered around the edges of her words, clear and piercing. “I saved your life once. Before they made me a Wife.”

As if would make her go away, Furiosa nodded an acknowledgement at last. She could not, would not speak. She was an Imperator now. She recognized the thick red hair of the Wife standing there with a hare in her arms, and she knew the crew that had run down the dark-skinned Wife with braided hair and a badger daemon. They had been bragging of it, a thousand days ago. It had been big news for a while. Furiosa had been impressed enough to fight for a War Boy’s inclusion on her crew. His name was Ripper, and he was still fighting with her.

Furiosa was on the wrong side of this Vault. It should have made her feel stronger; she was in control at last. She was safe from Joe. Instead it made her nervous. These Wives would not judge her by the standards of the Wasteland, but by some other, older measure. A measure that left her damned, with blood dripping from her hands. If Ilaria truly had recognized her, and the hyena had dreamed up some twisted penance for rising so high in the Citadel’s ranks, Furiosa thought that there could be no more fitting punishment.

She would not answer Angharad, though the Wife stood and by turns demanded or pleaded that Furiosa greet her as a friend. The others moved off, after a while. The red-head (Furiosa refused to remember her name) reached out, took Angharad’s hand. Pulled her away, gently, her hare twitching her ears at Furiosa’s every breath.

And that was her first day in the Vault.


	2. Chapter 2

“Don’t you remember me?” Angharad asked, but Furiosa stared at her with an Imperator’s eyes and did not answer. But Joe had only called her Splendid, and maybe – “I saved your life once. Before they made me a Wife. I’m Angharad, not _Splendid_.” She spat out the moniker Joe had given her like a curse. Adara was at her side, and surely her daemon was singular enough to jog a memory. 

Furiosa only looked away, staring at Miss Giddy and the others, but she did not _know_ the others. Angharad did. Adara stepped between them and Furiosa; she did not growl or bare her teeth, but the protective gesture was obvious, and Furiosa blinked. Looked down at the daemon, then away. Finally, she nodded, and Angharad stepped closer. She raised a hand as if to reach out, but there was something in the other woman’s stance. Her shoulders, her clenched fist. Angharad had not spent two hundred days without learning when Furiosa was ready to lash out if approached. 

“I thought you were dead,” Angharad said, pleading. “I thought they had _killed_ you, that day on the causeway. Furiosa, what happened to you?”

But she would not answer. “Fine. It was my fault. I took us too close to the causeway. My mother – I had been warned not to get to close, to let people see me. She knew, but I never listened. And,” she added last, cruel because nothing else had turned Furiosa’s stubborn silence, “Maybe I thought it didn’t matter if I had someone to protect me.” 

Furiosa only blinked, never looking away from her section of the wall. It was like talking to a statue. Angharad wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to throw her fists against Furiosa’s unbreakable shell until the road warrior she remembered crawled out, alive and spitting mad. Whole. 

Furiosa had never had a daemon by her side as long as Angharad knew her, but for the first time that lack seemed more like a War Boy’s cutting than a mythical warrior’s choice. For the first time, Furiosa seemed _less_ than the Wives, than Miss Giddy. In the end, _what_ had happened to her did not matter. Angharad knew where to place this blame, and it was not on Furiosa’s silent shoulders. 

When Capable wrapped her hand around Angharad’s, the golden Wife felt herself jolted back, bound into the Vault by the touch. While she’d been arguing, no matter how one-sidedly, she had been free again. Wretched again, with only herself and Furiosa to account for. 

Angharad turned and smiled back at Capable, shoving the false sense of freedom as far away from herself as she could. Adara bent to touch noses with Caelai, the little hare twitching nervously so close to an Imperator. “We’re about to have a lesson,” Capable said, her head held high. She kept one eye on Furiosa. “Won’t you – I’d like if you’d come listen.”

“Alright,” Angharad said, deliberately refusing to look back. She squeezed Capable’s hand tightly, trying to pull together the two halves of herself that Furiosa had created. One half was a Wife, smoldering but obedient. The other was Furiosa’s friend, wild and aching for a fist-fight. She could not have them both. 

“Let’s go Adara,” she said. When the lioness picked up the hare by the scruff of her neck, neither of them said a word. Capable only tried to smile (whether or not she succeeded wasn’t the point) and they headed back to their bedroom, where there was at least a modicum of privacy from this new invasion. Welcome and unwelcome. 


End file.
